Echoes of War
by SoA
Summary: Bryony Thuvell returns from ten years in exile to a changed galaxy. The Jedi are all but gone as mysterious enemies wage their war against the few Jedi that remain from the shadows at the edge of space. Still haunted by her part in the horrors of the Mandalorian Wars, Bryony must become the standard bearer for the Jedi to gather them again to drive out their shadowy foes.


Prologue

Captain Quenlin paced the bridge of the _Harbinger_. His fifteen years of service and six years of good standing as captain of this very vessel certainly should have earned him and his crew better than running errands at the whim of a freshly promoted hero-admiral. Personally ferrying a passenger from the seedy surface of Thila in his own shuttle was something he certainly should not have had to have done at this point in his career—war hero or no, but orders were orders. The identity of the passenger was to remain utterly confidential to all but himself. The Jedi, Thuvell, said almost nothing during the shuttle ride, only giving a quiet thanks, then locked herself up in the spare officers' quarters for the journey.

Demeaning as this all was, a specific mission beyond 'patrolling the outer rim' did give his crew a sense of purpose for the first time in months. They did not know the reason for their stopover at Thila, but they knew it was important, on direct orders from Admiral Onasi.

"Sir, we have a distress signal from the Esstran Sector, just off our current hyperspace trajectory," his communications officer reported suddenly, "Hailing from a _Dynamic_-class freighter of unknown origin."

"Patch it through to my terminal," he ordered as he strode over to the terminal and clipped on his earpiece. The holo-less voice transmission came through almost immediately, "...attacked us out of nowhere! Help! It's like one of those Sith warships out of all those war holos. We don't have anything they could want! If anyone is out there, help!" The transmission repeated on recording again. Quenlin wondered how long it had been playing and whether the freighter was still in one piece. Regardless, there appeared to be a Sith ship in Republic space, and that was not something they could pass by, even with a high-priority passenger aboard.

He dialed Admiral Onasi, who answered immediately. "Captain Quenlin," Admiral Onasi greeted him, "Do you have the passenger aboard?"

"Yes sir," Quenlin replied curtly, "But we have just received a distress call from the core-ward edge of the Esstran Sector, reporting a Sith warship attacking a small _Dynamic_-class freighter. The origin of the freighter is unknown, so it could easily be a farce."

The admiral seemed immediately interested, "What is that ship's transponder codes?"

"Transmitting them now," Quenlin punched a few buttons.

The admiral's reaction was immediate. "That's the _Ebon Hawk_," he gaped, "How did it—Go to those coordinates immediately. Investigate this report of a Sith attack, but above all, bring me that freighter and its crew."

_Or whatever is left of them_, Quenlin thought grimly. "Right away, sir," he nodded.

"Thank you Captain. Keep me posted," he replied, "Admiral Onasi out."

Quenlin removed his earpiece and immediately ordered, "Set a course for the source of the distress signal. All personnel to battle stations, we could be flying into a firefight!"

By the time the Harbinger pulled out of hyperspace in the Esstran Sector, all was quiet. A small freighter hung dead in space, rapidly venting oxygen, dwarfed by the huge Sith battle cruiser, which was equally silent. The Sith cruiser seemed just as dead to space as the freighter. It gave no reaction to the Republic Hammerhead's arrival. Quenlin bristled at the whole scene. Silent as it was, it made him uneasy.

"Engage the tractor beams," he ordered, "Pull in that freighter. The admiral wants her in one piece."

"Sir, I think 'one piece' is a bit much to hope for, given the state of that ship," his lieutenant quipped.

Quenlin ignored him. "Everyone on your guard. I don't trust that Sith ship to stay quiet," he said as he paced, staring out the front viewport at the huge battleship. If it were to wake up again, his crew would not survive a head-on confrontation. "Watch that for any signs of life," he ordered the bridge, then to his diagnostics techs, "Run the full set of scans on it. See if we can figure out what went wrong to leave it so quiet. Prepare a boarding crew to be ready at my word." His bridge crew set to work, suddenly on edge and yet eager to actually be doing something. This was the first 'enemy' ship they had encountered in months, and even then, the last had only been a crew of overzealous ex-Mandalorian smugglers. This was why they were patrolling the Outer Rim. Quenlin was suddenly glad to have been assigned this passenger mission, even as it had gone awry. Perhaps that up-start hero admiral would use him more judiciously in the future.

The scan was finished in minutes and the boarding crew was ready aboard a shuttle in the rear hangar not long after. "Sir," his lieutenant began somewhat hesitantly. Quenlin knew already that the news would not be too his liking. "The scans came back negative. We cannot find any signs of life. The technicians say there could be some electromagnetic interference from a nearby nova cloud, but even with that, our scans could only miss a few life forms. Either that ship really is dead or it is manned by droids."

Quenlin nodded thoughtfully, if this was indeed an old Sith cruiser, you never could predict what would come of the Sith aboard. However, this was no time for hesitation. They could not leave a lone Sith ship free at the edge of Republic space, not when so much remained uncertain about the remaining Sith in the galaxy.

"Sir, the freighter is aboard," the tractor beam operator reported.

Turning first to his lieutenant, Quenlin ordered, "Send the boarding team over. Warn them of the potential of droids as well as an oxygen leakage. Proceed with caution but gather whatever information on these mystery Sith as we can. That freighter must have had something up its sleeves to knock out a ship like that, as unlikely as that sounds. None of this adds up. Proceed with any other scans you have. I don't want that boarding team surprised by anything, understood?"

"Yes sir,"the lieutenant said stiffly and turned to his command.

He acknowledged the hyperdrive operator with a nod and then called down to the starboard hangar where the freighter _The Ebon Hawk_ had been taken aboard, "Escort a medical team aboard, search for survivors and assess the damage. See if you can get anything from whatever is left of the on-board computers."

"Understood, sir," the woman at the other end acknowledged.

Captain Quenlin then stepped back and watched the events unfold from the front viewport of _The Harbinger. _The silver-gray boarding shuttle zipped across the space between _The Harbinger_ and the Sith cruiser that hung inexplicably dead in space. Although the whole situation reeked of Sith deception, Quenlin trusted his men. They were well trained, and many of them had been with him even since the Jedi Civil War. Soon, the silhouette of the shuttle was lost against the silver-gray of the much larger Sith cruiser.

A blue light on his console began to flash, signaling an incoming comm call from the hangar bay. Pressing the comm, he asked, "Report?"

"There are no survivors, sir," the woman in the hangar bay summarized, "Two Mirialan and an old woman. There are three droids, but only the two astromechs seem to be functional. I am surprised that freighter managed to last this long, sir."

"And the on-board computers?" Quenlin asked.

"The navacomputer has been voice locked and one of the astromechs seems oddly protective of the rest of it as well, unwilling to cooperate with anyone who is not its now deceased master," she replied, pausing, "We have techs on their way down to deal with the situation."

"Good," Quenlin nodded, though she could not see him, "Report to me as you learn anything else."

"The shuttle has docked with the cruiser sir," another of his bridge officers reported, "They are ready to begin boarding at your word."

"Have our scans revealed any other hazardous conditions?" he asked.

"No ration, fires, armed explosives, or atmosphere leaks as far as our scanners can tell," a tech reported.

"Tell them to board, and be cautious," Quenlin replied. "I do not trust even a dead Sith."

"Yes sir."

His men were now aboard the enemy ship, doing their job as they were trained to do. _The Harbinger_ had the ship Onasi wanted aboard, and it was only a matter of time before one of his teams was able to get the technical read-out from one of the damaged ships of exactly what happened before they arrived—just how did a Sith cruiser and a Corellian freighter wind up both dead in space, far from any inhabited systems? Now, it was time to wait.

The first news of any kind Captain Quenlin got from his teams was from the techs aboard the damaged Corellian freighter. After stunning the pesky astromech droid and locking it in a closet, they managed to patch together sensor data of the skirmish that had occurred before the _Harbinger_ had reached the sector. The _Ebon Hawk_ had unexpectedly snapped out of hyperspace between star systems and immediately fell under intense fire by the Sith cruiser. It launched a few feeble attacks against the cruiser, but was soon venting oxygen and lost all but auxiliary power. The feisty astromech appeared to have been attempting repairs even then. However, as soon as the _Ebon Hawk_ had been defeated, the Sith cruiser fell quiet. Only minutes later, the _Harbinger _arrived.

Quenlin did not like the timing, nor did he like the inexplicable silence of the cruiser. However, his boarding crew reported the vessel to be as dead and empty as the scanners determined it to be. They did find the gruesomely broken body of a man on the ship's bridge. The best guess anyone had is that this man, a Sith, had someone been directing the ship on his own and died suddenly during the battle. However, best guesses were not good enough. Quenlin ordered the body to be brought back for autopsy. There was little to be learned from the Sith's main computers. They too had been inexplicably destroyed or wiped clean, seemingly moments before the _Harbinger_ arrived.

Captain Quenlin was not pleased at how smoothly the investigation was going. There were too many unanswered questions. Quenlin hated the Sith, and this whole operation stank of them. He knew he aught to contact Admiral Onasi with news of the freighter, but until he had more than three dead passengers and two dead ships, he was loathe to report anything. He needed answers.

Time passed all too slowly for his liking, but Onasi did not contact him for an update. The boarding crew returned with the body of the Sith man. It was transfered to the morgue with the other three bodies from the freighter, however, his body was so broken, his medical team hardly knew where to begin. "It is almost as if he was living like this, sir, I can't understand how that is even possible," the head doctor reported, baffled, "I don't know what hope we have of ascertaining his cause of death when no part of his body should have been functioning in the first place. However, it is clear, he has just died."

"Kriffing Sith, alright," Quenlin muttered.

"Sir?" she asked.

"Continue your investigations," he replied. He heard a commotion in the med bay beyond the doctor.

The doctor's holo twisted to look over her shoulder. "Ah, sir, there appears to be another… situation here," she began slowly.

"Yes?" he asked. That was not what he wanted to hear.

"Sir, the body of the old woman from the freighter," she started, deeper in disbelief, "It's gone."

"What do you mean, 'gone'?" he asked, "Bodies don't just get up and walk away."

"The old woman's body is no longer on the bed where we left it," she replied slowly.

Quenlin cursed under his breath. This day got stranger and stranger. "You and your team worry about the Sith body," he replied, "I'll get in contact with security to see if they can trace camera feeds to find out who stole your body."

"Yes sir," she replied, and the holocom went blank.

Quenlin paced up to the front of the bridge and stared out the viewport at the silent Sith cruiser. "What are you?" he murmured. Turning to the nearest comm tech, he ordered, "Get in contact with security. See if they find anything in the camera feeds recently near the med bay of a body being stolen."

The tech nodded, but before he could reply, one of the ships newest ensigns whose name he could not remember dashed onto the bridge. "Sir, there has been an unauthorized entry onto the passenger deck," he panted.

"And?" Quenlin demanded. He did not need any more bizarre news.

"The passenger from Thila," the young man began hesitantly, "She's missing."

"Just what I need," Quenlin cursed to himself, "A Sith ship with a missing crew, a missing body, and now a missing Republic VIP. Thank you, ensign." Turning to the tech again, he ordered, "And have security look for our passenger as well."

"Sir, I cannot raise security," the tech replied, "They are not responding to my comm hails."

_This has just gone from bad to worse._ He gazed out at the cruiser silhouetted against a myriad of stars. "What are you?" he whispered again. Even as he lingered at the viewport, he felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle, as if he was being watched. Turning back towards the bridge, there was no one staring in his direction, but he could not shake the feeling of uneasiness. "I want teams sent to the passenger deck, the med bay, and security right now. I need to know what is going on here," he barked.

His lieutenant jumped from his seat and scrambled to work, "Right away sir!"

As Quenlin turned back to stare at the cruiser, another ship darted away from the _Harbinger. _His jaw dropped.

"Sir, the freighter—" someone began.

"I know!" he snapped, "Who's aboard that thing? Find out who cleared it for takeoff? Where is my hangar crew? Activate the tractor beam and get that ship back here!"

Before his techs could respond, it winked into hyperspace and was gone.

He swore loudly.

A few of his bridge crew glanced sharply up at him but said nothing.

A siren began to whine.

"What is it now?" he asked.

"Someone pulled an alarm in the med bay. Something is wrong down there."

"Get some people down there now, and I want them armed," he barked, "What the Force is going on here?"

"Yes sir!"

_And I didn't think this day could get any worse. I lost my passenger and my freighter, and there is something funny going on on my ship. I'll be lucky if I don't lose my command after this. Onasi is not going to be pleased._


End file.
